Africa fast growing region despite poverty By MAILESI BANDA

Sat, 03 Jun 2017 12:28:37 +0000

AFRICA’s Gross Domestic Product for the last 10 years has averaged 5 percent and nearly half of the countries have more than doubled their per capita income.

This is according to the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) 2015 to 2017 rolling plan and budget document.

According to the report, Africa has emerged as the fastest growing region in the world despite an uncertain global environment and income growth which has contributed to a decline in poverty of 0.5 percent per year, leading to 42 percent of the population living in poverty.

It reports that  the continent’s challenges remain vast, adding that the levels of income inequality are high and investment in human and physical capital was insufficient to enable the private sector create jobs for the 15 million young Africans who entered the work force every year.

The report disclosed that  90 percent of Africa’s jobs were informal, characterized by low productivity and pay, resulting in more than 400 million Africans living on less than US$ 1.25 per day.

The continent has been reported to depend excessively on the export of primary commodities and that roughly a quarter of the continent’s population lived in fragile economies.

It suggests that improved macroeconomic conditions and gradually improving business environment meant that Africa would be able to attract growing levels of foreign direct investment to help bridge its development gap.

African countries are also reported to be forging new partnerships with emerging economies like Brazil, Russia, India and China, which was US$28 billion in 2000 and was projected to amount to more than US$500 billion in 2015.

The continent was also attracting record remittance flows, estimated at US$60 billion in 2013. Although official development assistance globally has reached an all-time high, African countries are experiencing a decline in foreign aid at a time when African governments were increasingly turning to domestic resources and international capital markets for the much needed development finance.

According to the document, tax revenues have more than doubled to 15 percent of GDP, and mineral wealth was contributing US$30 billion a year to fiscal revenues. Amid this development, sub-Saharan African countries have borrowed over US$11 billion in international capital markets since 2006.

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